I would like the government to introduce compulsory Digital Literacy in all schools for year six and seven, the top of Primary School and first year of secondary school, to help children anticipate what it means, to help their resilience and help empower them to be more in control in their own social media accounts. Most social media platforms have a minimum age of 13, but keeping up with changing apps and trends is a challenge for parents. Simple things like trying to get people round the table for dinner, the amount of times i have to call people down because theyre on their phones. These mothers have started a project in Primary Schools in kent to make children understand its 0k not to be online. The possibility of feeling rejected is kind of there all the time which is a pretty sad thing, its such a vulnerable age. Todays report warns the challenges are many. Increasing pressures to be popular needs Early Intervention to make sure children are emotionally prepared for life online. Newsday is coming up at midnight. Now on bbc news, its time for newsnight. The playground has always been a judgemental space. But theres no playground more judgemental than that of social media. What does getting a like mean . You get popular. Popularity. You know people like me. Its hard enough for adults to navigate their way through the world of social media, so feel for the children who have to learn the dos and donts for themselves. Englands children commissioner thinks they need guidance. Well ask what parents and schools can do to help, and what damage is done if they dont. Would you be more likely to invest in a furniture manufacturer if they put the word blockchain in their name and said they were now getting into the crypto Currency Business . Yes . Youre not alone. Its all the rage. We have a psychology professor to help analyse your problem. And activist power. A new study tells us what the members of Political Parties think. And, yes, they do think. But are they exerting too much power over parties that are really meant to be accountable to the people . Hello. Weve all met adults who are worryingly addicted to social media and the sense of self worth it gives them. So how much more concerned should we be, when it comes to children . Well, the childrens commissioner for england, anne longfield, is very worried about those leaving Primary School, who end up craving acceptance via likes and positive comments on line. Publishing a study on social media use of 8 to i2 year olds, she concludes that schools need to help the pre teens prepare for the emotional assaults they will endure on social media when they are in secondary school. Theres an enormous change in the use of social media from something that is fun and friendly and part of family life when theyre younger to an absolute cliff edge when 13 go to secondary school, which we know is one of the most pressured times for children when they start to learn what the new environment is about, where they have an avalanche of pressure from social media. Suddenly, the whole new peer group has a phone in their hand and has access to social media as part of that. She thinks parents need guidance too, by the way. But before we talk about how to best help young people navigate social media, lets hearfrom them. We sent Katie Razzall to a Girls State Secondary School in south london today. She talked to some eleven and 12 year olds. Their school has a ban on phones, but for a conversation about phones and what these students do with them, the rules quite fairly went out of the window. Does everyone in your class have a smart phone . Yes. I got it when i was 10, because my mum thinks im sensible. As i got into year six i started having instagram and things like that and yeah. Why did you want them . I think it is because everyone else had it and ijust felt like, its at school, i want it. Youre supposed to be 13 to have them . Yeah. Itjust makes people our age feel under pressure, because youre supposed to have this thing and your parents say you cant and then its over and over again like a cycle, should i get it or not . Other people have facebook, instagram. Some people think that youve got to be like them and do everything they do and if you dont have something, people arent going to like you. I had musicly on my phone, because i thought it would be fun. Then i found out that all the stalkers and all the other people that are not really good. So ijust, my mum told me to take it off. I spend about. Six to seven hours on my phone. Every day . It just depends on what im doing every day. I used to spend a lot of time on my phone, now i spend kind of enough time. What is that . Four or five hours a day. But im not only on social media, im also on games. I dont spend much time on my phone, because i do origami, learning japanese, because of some obvious reasons. What does getting a like mean . You get popular. Popularity. It means im appreciated, people like me. I dont have the social media that gets me likes, but my friends care about getting likes. When i observe my friend getting them likes, they go, like they have won the lottery. They are so happy and they run around, like, i got a like. And for them it means the whole world. Do you think it can be damaging to people . Yeah, because for example instagram theres Something Like the perfect image and the perfect body and people can change that and start to not eat anything or start to change the way they look or you know do things without their parents knowing. Yeah, it is damaging. Do people worry about being rejected if theyre not part of something online . Yes. It depends who it is. Some feel like, if i dont get added to this group then youre not really part of anything and you feel excluded from everyone. People go out of their way to try and make themselves look like the perfect image. Because theyve seen someone like a celebrity and theyre, like, theyre perfect, i want to be like them. So they try to make themselves look like them in speech or in appearance or even in personality. Sometimes two people are having an argument and loads of people go on one side and the other person feels bad. And they get upset and they leave the group and then people add them back to torment them. People believe people, but really like they say, oh, youre not good enough. And, yeah, that is what they say. Online . Yeah, online. How does that make people feel . Sad. Views from one school there. I am joined by head teacher of passmores academy, vic goddard, writer shannon kyle, mother of a 16 year old, and carina maggar, who is choosing to take a step back from social media. I want to ask each of you. If i put a button here and if you pushed that button all social media disappears and is eradicated for everyone under 16, would you push the button . Yes. Why would you do that . Because i think it has so many negative effects and it is so time consuming on their daily lives. So much time is wasted by under 165 spending time on their phone. So we can keep the internet and look things up, just the social media. I would push it as well. Really . Definitely. I think the ability to communicate orally and present yourself is massively affected by the fact is that they communicate in that way and i think it will limit their life chances. You can have both, but that takes parenting and balance. Well talk about what you do about it. We heard one pupil saying six hours a day on the phone. That is ridiculous. Do you come across that that . Yes. If i ask a pupil where their School Planner is they cant find it but they know where their phone it. Shannon, would you push that . Definitely not. I believe it can be a force for good and i think that there is a lot of hysteria around this that is unnecessary. Its like in the 1960s when our grandparents generation were worried and the coffee shops and it was just something for young people and i think that it can do a force for good. They can make friends on social media, they can get advice that they wouldnt otherwise get. Of course, it can be a bit of a beast and it needs containing and it needs using responsibly, but ultimately it is a fantastic thing. When i was a teenager in the 1990s, i was stuck in my bedroom thumbing through old copies ofjust17. Thats all i had im struck by if kids are not being cruel this way, in this method, theyre going to be cruel in another method. Maybe we worry about the vehicle. It is control, though. Where is my child safest . In my house. If my sons in my house i know he is safe. Thats myjob. Not any more. He is not safe in my house. If i dont know what he is on, what social media, we have got to translate social media into the real world, would you allow a stranger to walk into your childs bedroom . No, you wouldnt, but you allow them in through a phone. That is not good enough. Would you like a stranger to walk up to your child in a park . No. It is about good parenting. Shannon, it can be a superaccelerator of problems. Children can bully each other, they always have, but it can be particularly aggressively, unpleasa ntly magnified when there is this power of communication and group communication. Is that not a problem . Of course it is. I wouldnt deny for a second that it was. But at the end of the day, on social media, you can block somebody. If youre getting bullied in the school ground, you have to see them every day at school. And if you educate your children to actually acknowledge when this is happening, when somethings out of order, when theyre being badly treated, you can get them to do it. Do you buy that . I find it so difficult to answer that question. It is about educating your kids. Its about knowing. I worry that putting up a selfie and a kid receiving ten likes is going to feel ugly and insecure and it is about educating your children about the kinds of things they should be sharing online. Lets talk about how we make it better. So we havent got the button, so we just have to make the best of what exists. Vic, you have written a letter to your parents. Bizarrely today. It had nothing to do with this. You have rules, you let them bring phones in. You could say no phones. And schools do. But when you speak to the parents of the children in the school, because some work in my school and theyve never handed their phone in once. So the school has achieved what they want. Hand in your phone. I havent got one today, sir. Of course you havent. For me, it is about as a parent giving them a space where it is monitored. Getting them to understand having a phone is a privilege, not a right. I have given them that phone and there comes responsibility for their behaviour and how they deal with each other. Charging stations in your house. No phone in the bedroom. Before you go to bed, the phone is charged here. So you have a nights sleep. The fear of missing out is such a drive. With your daughter, do you let her keep the phone with her by the bed at night . She is 16 now, i would defy any parent after the age 01 14 or 15 to take that phone off them. I think its about being sensible, but it is also about education, so the kids need to know when they have had enough. Sometimes my daughter says, i have had enough of my phone and im going to put it away. She is just fooling you. That is what i started to do, i found i was spending too much time on my phone. Notjust social media. And you have to have the will power to say it is not the first thing i will look at in the morning. And its not the last thing before i go to bed. It is a fairly tale land, this is the real world. What is in the palm of your hand is a fairy tale version. It takes a lot for a teenager think that when everybody else is looking at their phone. There is a thing about tough love, i dont think it is tough love, it is authentic care. I want to keep my child safe and pow understand the power and what it can be used for in the good and to understand when it is time to put it away, i as a adult will make that decision if i have to. Do you allow your daughter secrets on line, you dont read her texts . No, not anymore. When she was younger, i was there when she signed up to twitter and facebook and, yes, i used to look to see what she was doing. She signed up at 11. She is not allowed at 11 the rule is 13. But theyre all doing it at 11. I made a decision, maybe i may. You let her lie online . Yes i did. I hold my hands up. What does that teach her . Why are there different ages . This is the thing. The social Network Companies need to get together and they need to monitor this. It isnt being monitored. Kids will do what they want at whatever age. You are right, it starts at secondary school, thats when these problems start. If you go to secondary school, you dont have a mobile phone, you are not on social media by secondary school, you are really left out. It must come back to the schools, as much as it comes to the parents. If a parents try to impose something on their child that none of the other are doing. What impact can i have . I cannot tell parents that, i can encourage, but i cant do it. At least the hours you have them at school, you can say put the phones away. That is what we say. From my point of view, if a child is doing a science experiment, they can put it on their phone, and use it later, that is worthwhile. I used to like the blackberry phones, because they used to flash a red light in their pockets. Iphones, we say in your bag, unless we give them permission to have it out. A parent who gives a phone to their child without boundaries, they have reneged on their responsibilities. We will leave it there. Thank you. Youve heard of bitcoin, and its ability to apparently create money from nothing. And hundreds of billions of dollars of money at that. But you may have missed just how wacky the world of crypto currencies has become in recent weeks. There are over a thousand of them now and more are being created all the time. Its a classic gold rush. But even more weird has been the way ordinary companies have jumped on the bandwagon with some spectacular market results. One american iced tea maker, for example, changed its name in december from Long Island Iced Tea corp, to Long Blockchain Corp blockchain being the technology that powers bitcoin and other digital currencies. The share price tripled. Not surprisingly, regulators are worried and many think this is reminiscent of the worst excesses of the dot com bubble. Our Technology EditorDavid Grossman explains what has been going on. A rose by any other name, of course, but in the corporate world names matter. The promising start up backrub that managed to conquer the world would not have done had it not changed its name to google. Would blue ribbon sports have made such a swoosh if it hadnt become nike . 20 years ago, everyone added e or dotcom to their name. Now, the word is blockchain. If people stick blockchain in theircompany name, people will think, we will go with them, because i will see a good return. You are seeing that a lot. Anything with bitcoin is doing well. Blockchain might be able to do similar, so people will want some. Its the technology that underpins currencies like bitcoin. It allows every currency to verify every transaction. It means you can do away with a central register which is vulnerable to hacking. Blockchain is opening up a way to do finance which is more transparent, cheaper, faster, and it gives us the ability to cut out a lot of the middlemen and automated processes, whilst still keeping the same level or an improved level of security. But itll take time. We still have a long way to go. We need to battle test the technology. There will be ups and downs along the way. From a starting point, its a really good start. Are companies simply cashing in on the name . Take, for example, online plc, an essex based company that plodded along with a share price so flat you could hang washing on it. Until late october when it changed its name to Online Blockchain plc, the 400 Share Price Rise immediately. The ceo says the name change simply reflected the reality of what the company was now doing, according to its owner. We have only changed our name once in a generation. But it was a big change. Its had a big effect. We could have carried on with online and not changed the name and nobody would know for another six, nine months, that would be a distortion of the facts. Its important with names that you tell people what you are doing and that you transmit your message. Its all well and good being called something obscure, but its hard to get your message across. In some cases, though, in the early stages of a new technology it isnt always possible to say which companies claims are real and which mere illusion. Investors have to be very careful. There is a lot of good projects out there and equally there are a lot of projects that have understood that byjust using the buzzword blockchain you can attract a lot of investors and money. Homework is required. A lot of self education, self teaching, is required before putting any money to these products. As the super investor Warren Buffett sagely remarked, only when the tide goes out do you discover who has been swimming naked. The blockchain tide is still rising and who knows, it might for decades, or it might drain on the sand tomorrow, exposing, well, who knows what . Well, at least in the time of tulipmania, there were actual tulips at the end of it all, and people understood what they could do. Lets talk to professor peter ayton who is a psychologist specialising in behavioural economics. Would you buy shares into a company that changed its name, and changed its focus to dabbling in crypto currencies . Possibly. Im a human like everybody else. I dont suppose my behaviour would be that discrepant from what everybody else might think. To me it looks crazy. What would motivate people to go into this . Has greed taken over . There is some psychology, isnt there . There is literature that points to a behaviour which is anomalous with respect to what economists think ought to be happening. That shouldnt be a surprise. We have had another nobel prize for a behavioural economist this year. What we observe happening is no surprise to me. Is it almost hormonal, biological, you can put peoples brains into mris and see what they are thinking when they make these choices . This is the field of neuro economics. The existence of such a field would be a Science Fiction 20 years ago. But now it is providing us with all sorts of insight into the way the brain does things, which then have ramifications. It is slightly curious to me that we have this, sort of common interest in phenomena, which, sort of, looks psychological more than economic. Irrational exuberan